


Undercurrents

by karrenia_rune



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Fic Exchange, Gen, case-fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 05:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ongoing joint investigation into a string of child kidnappings in the Portland area becomes even more dangerous and complicated when it is discovered that one of the recovered children might be a very rare form of Wesen; in this case a female Russian water spirt known as a Rusalka.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undercurrents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cquinn](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=cquinn).



Disclaimer: Grimm is the property of NBC, Universal Television, GK Productions, Hazy Mills Productions, Open 4 Business Productions LLC and a lot of other people who aren’t me. The story was written for cquinn’ s request in the 2012 Grimm Exchange

**

 

"Undercurrents" by karrenia

The facts were that nobody on the force much liked it when the Feds felt obligated to interfere into an ongoing investigation, but both of the agents in question had made it more than clear that it was a fact that simply had to be accepted.

Nick had spoken briefly with the female agent, one Rebecca Castillo, and had learned that this was a case that struck particularly close to home. Prior to her current assignment with the bureau she had also worked with a division of Homeland Security who dealt with busting human trafficking crimes, and she had an excellent track record in that area.

However, her partner, Donald Jones, was more difficult to read, but as far as Nick was concerned, the man seemed to be the kind who went by the proverbial book and hardly ever deviated from that predetermined course.

An anonymous tip had led them to the pier and a considerably dilapidated warehouse at one in the morning in order to intercept a shipment whose origin point had been identified as coming in off a ship from Russia.

Hank had been of the opinion that they should find themselves someone who could speak the language or even read the Cyrillic alphabet, but they might be at a considerable disadvantage what with the language barrier.

“I can muddle through if it comes to that,” interjected Agent Jones, so we won’t have to bring in anyone else.”

Nick considered it, and agreed that it was the best solution, given the time frame that they had to work with.

He also realized that if the bust were to be successful they had a very narrow window of opportunity to head off the gang receiving the shipment, and soon they were all on the way to pier 33, hoping that they would not be too late.

From what little information they had been afforded during the mission briefing by the FBI agents, statistically speaking, most of the children were treated as little better than just another commodity, which was heinous enough in and of itself, which meant they were used as a kind of ready labor force and even worse, when they were of no more use, were simply discarded.

**

The sky was pewter gray shading towards a deep inky black and the clouds scudding by overhead wreathed the moon in a thin veil, but there was enough light to see by. Both Nick and Hank reached into their pockets for their flashlights and thumbed them into the on position, while the agents did the same while they brought up the rear.

If the exterior of the warehouse had given off the appearance of about to fall down around their heads, the interior was the exact opposite. The floor had been swept recently, a desk with several piles of papers and coffee mugs, and empty take-out containers lay strewn about. Hank walked over and scanned the papers then looked up.

“Cargo manifests, if I don’t miss my guess, and what appears to some kind of financial ledger. I’ve heard of supply and demand, but trading in human lives, that’s just wrong on so many levels!”

“You’ll get no argument from me, Detective Griffin,” replied Agent Castillo. “Is there anything in here that we can use to find those kids before their inevitable ‘buyers’ show up to collect?”

“From what little I can make out, the scheduled pickup is in less than an hour and the ship that they came in on was called the “Sea Witch”” replied Hank.

“Does it say where the ship left port, or who the owner is?” asked Agent Castillo.

“Yeah, just give me a sec,” Hank replied. “The ship left two weeks ago, from Kiev and I think it’s owned by a shipping company owned by a man by the name of Victor Vilvistock.”

Agent Jones elbowed his way over to where they stood leaning over the desk, and read the cargo manifests and open book of ledgers, his finger tracing the sweeping curved lines of the Cyrillic alphabet, as his lips silently moved in time to the movements of his fingers.

“Are you getting anything more from it, than I did, Agent Jones?” Hank asked.

“Yes, and we’d best hurry. I don’t like this any more than you do,” the other man replied.

“Are you saying that if the deal falls through that whoever is holding the kids might simply…?” Nick trailed off uncomfortably.

“Dispose of them, Detective Burkhardt,” Jones replied with a stoic nod,” then yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Hank and Nick exchanged meaningful glances, but let it pass without comment; however both men thought that one of two things were at work here: Either the anonymous tipster had been mistaken, or they were walking into an ambush.

The four of them marched double-time all the while on the look-out for an ambush or anything else nasty that might be lurking in store for them. When nothing of the sort was in the offing, both Nick and Hank exchanged looks. Had they been wrong, or the deal had fallen through and they were too late?

“The ground floor appears to be all clear,” called Agent Jones. “But there are tracks in the dirt, show signs that a whole lot of people gathered here and it appears the tracks lead to a freight elevator to the second floor of the warehouse.”

“How many are a whole lot?” asked Hank.

“I’d say about a dozen,” replied Agent Jones.

“Then let’s head on up,” ordered Agent Castillo.

The trip up the freight elevator was uneventful, and then they clambered out and out to the second floor of the warehouse.

Again, the place looked as if someone had once taken care to keep the place if not clean, at least serviceable, but there was no one around, and to Hank’s way of thinking, it looked as if they had cleared out in a hurry; and it made him distinctly uneasy. In the back of his mind, he thought, “if something’s bad gonna go down, now would be the time for it to happen.”

The first thing they noticed in a room that had been secured with a rusted and unlocked padlock was the smell, it was musty and smelled like iron, or sea brine, or worse, blood, too similar but unrelated odors.

When the joint investigation team stumbled upon the sprawled corpses of the kidnappers and the gang who bought the shipment, at first glance it would appear that the two groups had had a falling-out. Perhaps over the price, or the value of the cargo, or one or the other party had reneged on their side of the bargain. Regardless of what had happened, the place was a gory mess, and the bodies lay sprawled every which way as if they had been used and then discarded by a giant-sized deranged child.

If the sight of the dead bodies were not bad enough, the smell of blood and other unpleasant odors just added insult to injury. Hank staggered a bit and commented over his shoulder to his partner, “It never gets any easier does it?”

“No,” replied Nick, reaching out one hand to his partner, “But we make do.”

 

Agent Castillo offered them both a tight-lipped smile that Nick read as more understanding then disdainful while her partner went over to kneel beside the pile of bodies and toed the nearest with his boot.

Agent Castillo drifted aside, her attention driven but something that she was hard-pressed to define, it was not exactly a sound, or a smell, but something else, for all she knew it could have been a sound, it was like a mix between whimpering and muffled breathing. Kicking aside the stacks of what appeared to be sandbags and black garbage bags, she came upon a large area that had been masked by the debris and a musty-smelling velvet curtain.

“Guys, get over here! I’ve found the kids!” she yelled over her shoulder, not wanting to risk turning around and losing sight of the children’s frightened faces that stared back out at her.

“What is it?” Agent Jones called back to her.

Agent Castillo crouched down and peered into the shadowy confines of the shipping crates, the children had huddled into themselves, either afraid that she was one of the men coming to collect them, or maybe for the sharing of body heat, or because they didn’t want to lose want scant human contact the close confines afforded. Whatever the case, Agent Rebecca Castillo saw that haunted white-rimmed wide-eyed look of despair, it was one that should never have been inflicted on anyone.

“I don’t know if you can understand me, but we’re not here to hurt you,” she whispered in a soothing, steady tone, hoping that maybe these children, even if they could not understand her words would understand the intention behind them.

She stretched out a hand to the nearest child, a boy with tousled blonde hair and blue eyes, who though probably about ten years of age looked much younger. His limbs and face were so thin due to starvation, made it difficult to make a concrete identification.

The boy, swallowed and blinked several times, and said, “My name is Sergei.”

Rebecca blinked, and then put on her best winning smile, and stretched out her hands, this time with the palms turned upward, in a dumb show meant to convey that she meant no harm. “Hello, Sergei, my name is Rebecca, and I’m with some people who want to take you and your friends away from all of this. Will you come with us, please?”

“Olga says, that you lie and want to hurt us, use us,” muttered Sergei.

“Who’s Olga?” By now Detective Jones, Nick and Hank had joined the two FBI agents.

“Olga, is the one who’s kept us together, she’s in the back there, with those icy blue eyes and all that hair.”

“Thank you, that’s very helpful,” Rebecca continued. “Can you tell us anything more?”

Sergei nodded and a heartbeat later added in a hushed undertone: “Peter says it’s pretty, but I think it’s just a big mess.”

“Well, anyone’s hair would be a big mess considering what you all have been through. You see mine in the morning,” Rebecca said with a tightly controlled laugh. “Are you all right, is anyone hurt or sick?”

“No. At least I don’t think so…..” Sven said and then trailed off, his eyes closing, and his hands spasmodically clenching and unclenching. A moment or two later, when Nick was about to remark to Hank that the boy appeared on the brink of going silent completely, he finally muttered:

“Don’t’ tell her I said this, but I think she acts tough, because she does not want to admit that she’s scared, just like the rest of us,” whispered Sven, as he cast nervous glances around at the tightly huddled group.

“Okay, what do you say about coming with us?” Agent Castillo asked Sven.

She did not receive an immediate response to this question as the children, held a muttered conference in Russian amongst themselves.

“We’re making progress, unless they seem unwilling to talk to us,” Hank remarked.

“How many?” Nick asked.

“Eight, from my count,” replied Agent Jones.

“Okay, okay, we’ll come with you,” Sven said, as he as the remaining children untangled themselves from each other and emerged into the dim illumination of the warehouse’s second floor, blinking like owls emerging from their nests. The disheveled, dirty, and beaten look was still there, but at least the haunted look in their eyes that Agent Castillo had first noticed was, if not gone, at least visibly less than it had been.

Just as the last girl appeared, Nick felt a sudden sharp and rather disconcerting flash of the being lurking beneath the surface of one of the children, a girl of no more than twelve or thirteen.

The face was that of a woman much too old and knowing, and even a bit on the hungry and vicious side to belong to that of a young girl. That it should surprise him, given what he know and understood about the world of the Grimm’s and Wessen, took him aback. The color of her eyes had changed from an icy blue to a sea-green and her blonde hair seemed to have gained more than an inch or two.

Nick felt that the being or whatever it was that lived under the girl’s skin was staring right through him, and that it was hungry, so very hungry, but at the same time it sought to assuage that hunger, it also seemed to enjoy playing with its prey at the same time.

Just at that particular moment was when Hank noticed that his partner was shaken and asked, “Hey, you okay?”

Nick nodded and said, “Let’s get them out here and back where they can at least get cleaned up and safe.”

“Amen to that, man,” Hank replied.

 

**

Nick went off to one side, withdrawing his cell-phone out of his jacket pocket and hit the button on his contacts list and immediately dialed up Monroe. As experienced and as sanguine about the nature and the world in which he found himself all too often of late, the lines between the strange and the mundane had blurred into one another, there was still so much more that he needed to learn.

Somewhere along the way Monroe had come to be more than just a valuable resource, more than a confidant, what that more entailed, even Nick could not have expressly defined, in so many ways. Sometimes he wondered if the other man felt put upon, or took offense by just how much he tapped his knowledge of the Wesen world, but the truth of the matter, Monroe’s knowledge was valuable.

In the past year or so, they had saved each other’s lives so much the tallying of such things no longer mattered. He smiled to himself at that and took a deep breath, and hit the call button.

**

Monroe had been sitting in his favorite easy chair, having just finished a reading “The Brothers Karazmov” when his cell phone began ringing, a quick glance at the time on his favorite clock told him it was very late, or very early depending on how one choose to look at it. He next glanced at the caller id display, heaving a sigh at the same time that he nudged himself out of his chair, he picked up the phone. “Monroe,” he said into the speaker.

“Monroe, it’s Nick, I know it’s late, and I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t urgent, but I could really use your help on this one.”

“Sure, Nick, whatever you need man, but you know, not to get all hot and bothered, maybe we could work out a better system, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Sorry,” said Nick, “but could you meet me at my Aunt’s trailer, say around 5am, or so?”

“Sure, I’ll be there,” Monroe replied.

“Great, thanks a million,” Nick replied, and then hit the end call button.

 

****

Back at the precinct, they set to finding a place for eight children to stay. Short of placing them in protective custody, with the help of the woman who had been called in from Child Services, and Hank, it turned out, had been right on the money about needing to bring in an interpreter, because of the hand full of kids who could at least speak a smattering of English, they were also the least willing to talk about their recent ordeal.

****

 

Interlude

The following night Nick went to his Aunt Marie’s trailer, bringing Monroe with the strong suspicion percolating his mind that the deaths of the gang members and the smugglers were induced not by anything that went down between them, but were triggered by a Russian specie of Wessen, a female water spirit known as a Rusalka.

The books had been thumped onto the table and he sat in the rickety chair and flipped through the pages while Monroe stood off to his left, nervously shifting his weight from one foot to another.

At last, coming to the last third section of the dog-eared journal, Monroe at last ceased his movements and leaned over to tap a long-tapered index finger at a meticulously-drawn black and white image of a female figure that appeared to Nick like that of a stylized mermaid.

Monroe read from the caption penned underneath the drawing. “From Slavic mythology, a Rusalka is a female ghost, water nymph, succubus, or mermaid-like demon that dwelt in a waterway.”

Nick read the next part of the English text aloud:

“According to most traditions, the Rusalki were fish-women, who lived at the bottom of rivers. In the middle of the night, they would walk out to the bank and dance in meadows. If they saw handsome men, they would fascinate them with songs and dancing, mesmerize them, and they led them away to the river floor to their death.”

“Charming,” Monroe drawled in a sarcastic tone of voice.

“So I’m dealing with a ghost. Damn it, Monroe, dealing with the usual weird stuff is bad enough, now someone has to go and throw in the paranormal into the mix, just for a change?”

“I understand that your frustrated and angry, not to mention that this case, as complicated as it, doesn’t need anything else to make it worse,” said Monroe as reasonably as he could, sensing without quite understanding why Nick was understandably wound up, and there were aspects of the current murder investigation that he could not discuss with him, but even so, he was there to help in any way he could.

“Nick, the rest of the text is in Russian.”

“Hank, was right, we should have gotten an interpreter, straight out of the gate,” Nick remarked in an off-hand manner.

“I can translate the rest for you,” Monroe offered.

“I didn’t know you spoke Russian?”

“I don’t, I just read it. Have you ever read War and Peace or the Brothers Karzamov?”

“No, I can’t say that I have?”

“You should, their considered masterpieces of 20th century literature.”

Nick offered a tight-lipped grin, that help to somewhat relieve the tension that he’d had not even noticed he’d been carrying around with him ever since he had gone into that abandoned warehouse with the FBI agents; and that Monroe casually mentioning famous titles to be on his ‘to be read later’ list.

“Thanks for the tip Monroe, but I really haven’t got a lot of down time lately to read much of anything, but maybe when I do, you can provide me with a list of good titles.”

“Sure thing, Nick,” replied Monroe with a grin, but meanwhile back at the proverbial ranch; he bent down and examined the text, pausing for a second or two to bring his reading glasses out of his pocket and perching them over the bridge of his nose.

““The ghostly version is the soul of a young woman who had died in or near a river or a lake and came back to haunt that waterway. This undead Rusalka is not invariably malevolent, and will be allowed to die in peace if her death is avenged.

While her primary dwelling place was the body of water in which she died, the Rusalka could come out of the water at night, climb a tree, and sit there singing songs, sit on a dock and comb her hair, or join other Rusalki in circle dances in the field.

Though in some versions of the myth, their eyes shine like green fire, others describe them with extremely pale and translucent skin, and no visible pupils. Her hair is sometimes depicted as green or golden, and often perpetually wet. The Rusalka could not live long on dry land, but with her comb she was always safe, for it gave her the power to conjure water when she needed it.

According to some legends, should the Rusalka's hair dry out, she will die. Rusalki like to have men and children join in their games. They can do so by enticing men with their singing and then drowning them, while the children were often lured with baskets of fruit.

Men seduced by a Rusalka could die in her arms, and in some versions hearing her laugh could also cause death. Alternatively, they would attract men, mainly bachelors, and tickle them to death””.

The Rusalki were believed to be at their most dangerous during the Rusalka Week (Rusal'naia) in early June. At this time, they were supposed to be at their most dangerous.”

“Okay, now that I know what I’m dealing with, how do I stop it?”

Monroe continued to trace the words with finger and mutter under his breath, before adding:

“I don’t think Olga Vulkavitch truly intended to kill all of these men”

“How so?” asked Nick.

“Well, think about it. She may have been just another victim, and as horrific at it may be, the spirit within her could have been either provoked or frightened into lashing out.”

“It falls into the category of it’s definitely a possibility, but at the moment I can’t afford to take anything for granted,” replied Nick as he suddenly hurtled out of his chair and stood up, craning his neck in order to relieve stiff muscles. “In the meantime, Monroe, I think you should head back home and lay low for a while.”

“Uh, like, no way man, I’m already in this up to my neck, if you think I’m backing out now, then you’ve got another thing coming.”

Nick paused and gave his friend an apprising glance and a short bark of laughter mingled with astonishment at the passion in other man’s voice and that despite the odds stacked against them, Monroe would not take the chance to play it safe, but also at himself for being surprised.

A lot of things had changed in the last year or so, but loyalty to a person or a place or what have you, was a rare thing to have found; and he had certainly found that in Monroe in spades.

“Okay, but don’t take this the wrong way, I need to go collect Hank at the precinct, if you don’t want to head on home, I can call or meet up with you again at Rosalee’s shop with any further information about the case.”

“Sounds good to me, man,” Monroe replied and nodded. “Like you said, it’s getting late, so I guess that I’ll see you when I see you, huh?”

“Sounds about right, thanks Monroe,” replied Nick and then left the trailer.

***

Conclusion

“I have to say, man that was some major trippy stuff,” Hank remarked, as he straddled his desk chair and tapped his pen against his left ear. “

“You’ll get no argument from me, but I have to say I do have to wonder how our FBI friends are going to spin this one. No doubt the Russian consulate will want to know how some of their expatriate citizens wound up dead.

“Not to mention that they were members of an international criminal ring known for contracting deals other than just kidnapping,” Hank replied. “I doubt that the big muckety-mucks among the Russians are more concerned about having been able to arrest them then they are with their fate, still it was a bad way to go any way you slice it.”

Nick nodded and sighed. “I do wish we could have gotten to those children sooner.”

“What about Olga?” Pretending for a moment that we’re talking spiritual possession… well, I don’t know exactly what to say but you know what I’m trying to get at, right?”

“More or less, Hank, more or less,” Nick said. “As for me, I’m just glad it’s all over.”

“Yeah, but is it really over?”

“I don’t know, but it’s possible that once the spirit was release, she will be all right, given enough time.”

“Well, it’s late and we’ve got an early start tomorrow, so I’m heading home for some shut eye,” Hank said as he released his grip on the back of his chair. “G’night!”

“Good night,” Nick replied with a smile, a much more unforced example that he had managed to give in the past two or three days. It was a good feeling and one he expected to carry over into the rest of week and beyond.


End file.
